An email came out that Joanna is leaving Fidelity as PI’s president effective 12.31.23. That’s a short tenure as she started just 2 years ago. Some have said that’s the shortest time they remember from a President or EVP. Have any of you heard why? Was it voluntary or pushed out? Interesting times.
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She and Serravalli were brought in at the same time, which seemed to be part of a plan to hire more women into c-suite jobs, as (1) they weren't Fidelity lifers, as most top execs are, and (2) they're both women, and replaced men. The fact that her organization was split in two with two males (one lifer, one new) at the helm, this suggests that performance was the problem, even though accounts and AUM grew during her tenure. This torpedoes many of the theories on this site. What else do we got?
JR wasn't in the club. Leadership only tolerates folks from her clan in mutual funds, not in management. Get ready for the BCG consultants for a restructure (firings) because of the over hirings. RS is a company man and can follow orders.
Things aren't as good as they're telling you. Some bad stuff long-term is on the horizon.
It's concerning that she might have been pushed out because she was against DEI.
Everyone is, for good reasons, turning against DEI because it manufactures incompetence.
I see more incompetent people at Fidelity than I've ever seen before.
All new EVP / presidents are brought in to execute against specific goals and have a trial period. She didn’t achieve those business goals, struggled to win over the associates in the spilt of wealth and brokerage and lost key IT and executive talent (another KPI) and got into some DEI legal issues. Abby brought her in to show her daughter an inexperienced woman could run the firm and obviously either it didn’t work or it was good enough to prove a point or the DEI agenda of only focusing on women in finance and minorities of color was turning into a legal and marketing liability as trans rights and those with disabilities were clearly being discriminated against. Presence is the most valuable attribute at the firm and not all classes align to the Fidelity ideal. Plain and simple she was pushed out rather than fired.
Fidelity does poorly with diverse leaders from backgrounds that aren’t “affluent Boston Catholic.” They’ll find a white dude from Beverly Farms to take over.
She is a nice enough person but she was WAY over her head in this role. No strategic vision and no substance. All she did was travel around the world and take promotional pictures of herself and her minions and then brag about it on social media. I'm sure Abby saw right through this façade and sent her packing. As they saw in the mafia she got whacked.
Rotenberg isn't a wartime consigliere needed when the going gets tough in 2024. When the economy tanks, recession sets in, and it's time to RIF thousands she wouldn't have it in her. Stiles is a 36-year veteran who will get the job done without hesitation and still sleep soundly at night.
Way to try to bring race and religion into the conversation. For the record the President before her was Catholic so you don’t know what you are talking about.
She worked extremely hard
I once visited with the Fidelity senior leadership team and noticed just about everybody was a white catholic from MA.
She's a Jewish woman from Canada. She might not have fallen with the clique. I have no insight into her performance. Certainly though the numbers posted don't suggest firm issues with PI.
Just saw this: https://citywire.com/ria/news/4-4tn-fidelity-personal-investing-president-joanna-rotenberg-to-exit/a2432663
she posted "travelogues" of all of her site visits and photos of the christmas sweater her "team" gave her last year. all of her sycophants gushed how great she looked.
Would have to agree that she didn’t seem to bring much to the table.
She got wacked. She is smart, but no personality, created no vision & no synergies.
She didn't have the experience for this large a company/role. She was a reach hire.
Now do FFIO